Working women put in longer hours in 1992 while their salaries continued to lag behind men’s, according to the 14th Annual Salary Survey in January’s Working Woman magazine.
Fifty-six percent of women surveyed by the Roper Organization say they put in longer hours as a result of the 1992 recession. In addition, 54 percent of the 617 women surveyed say they sometimes or often worked on their “days off.”
Yet those longer hours did not necessarily translate into higher wages: For the most part, 1992 salaries (as reported by the Labor Department and Census Bureau) remained flat or rose only 2 to 3 percent, falling behind the 3.3 percent annual inflation rate.
On the bright side:
-The number of women with college degrees entering the work force rose 1.5 times as fast as the number of men doing so.
-Women’s median income has grown 28.7 percent since 1980 compared with a 1.3 decline for men.
-The gender gap in wages has narrowed since 1983 for women in at least 10 job categories. Female secretaries earned 77 cents for every dollar men in the same occupation earned in 1983, but the figure rose to 97 cents in 1991. Women physicians made 82 cents for every dollar male doctors earned in 1983, but only 54 cents in 1991. The gap also widened among lawyers. Statisticians say it may be because of the rising number of women entering these fields with entry-level salaries.
